The 6 Most Important Things in Business Today

Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) will start to trade energy futures. According to Reuters:

Exxon Mobil Corp is pushing deeper into energy trading, building a global cadre of experienced traders and beefing up risk-management systems to lift profit, according to executive recruiters and people familiar with the business.

The development is a sea change for a company that has stood out from rivals by limiting its past activity out of concern it would be accused of market manipulation. Exxon now aims to trade around more of its growing energy assets to get the best prices for its products and increase earnings, according to an employee familiar with the matter.

A deal that would put Chinese telecom company ZTE back in business by lifting U.S. sanctions may fall apart. According to The Wall Street Journal:

In a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, Republican Senate leaders set up a vote for this week that would undo the White House deal to revive Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was on Capitol Hill late Monday to lobby against the move. But Democratic and Republican lawmakers said that an agreement had been reached to wrap into the National Defense Authorization Act an amendment that would ban ZTE from buying components from U.S. suppliers. The Commerce Department in mid-April had banned exports to the company as punishment for breaking a settlement to resolve sanctions-busting sales to North Korea and Iran.

A federal judge will rule on the AT&T (NYSE: T) deal to buy Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), a transaction that has been challenged by the Trump administration. According to The Wall Street Journal:

AT&T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. have spent nearly two years planning and defending their tie-up, a marriage of necessity designed to take on bigger digital rivals.

A federal judge will only need a short time Tuesday afternoon to make it official or—if government antitrust enforcers prevail—block the deal, sending both companies back to the drawing board.

A huge merger in the medical products field may be underway. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Stryker Corp. has made a takeover approach to rival Boston Scientific Corp , a move to create a medical-device giant and the latest effort to consolidate a corner of the health-care industry that has produced a raft of large deals lately.

Boston Scientific has a market value approaching $50 billion, so a deal would be one of the largest in a year that is shaping up to be one of the busiest ever for mergers and acquisitions.

The long saga of net neutrality regulation has reached a critical crossroad. According to The Wall Street Journal:

Democrats and internet activists marked the rollback of internet neutrality rules on Monday by pushing House lawmakers to restore the regulations, hoping to score both political and policy gains.

The Republican-run Federal Communications Commission voted in December to repeal most of the Obama-era rules, which require internet providers to treat all online traffic equally. The rollback took effect officially on Monday.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has given poor reports to several SUVs. According to CNBC:

Two of the most popular midsize SUVs in the U.S. were given a “poor” rating in the latest round of crash tests that measure how well sport utility vehicles protect front-seat passengers in certain front-end collisions.

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee and 2018 Ford Explorer struggle to prevent some injuries when the front right corner of the vehicle collides with another vehicle or object while going 40 miles per hour.